page_title: Wheeler Opera House
section_title: 1893–1950: Neglect, fire and public ownership
hierarchical_section_title: Wheeler Opera House / History / 1893–1950: Neglect, fire and public ownership
caption_attribution_description: View north up South Mill Street in Aspen, CO, USA in early 1900s. Wheeler Opera House is at left.
context_page_description: The Wheeler Opera House is located at the corner of East Hyman Avenue and South Mill Street in Aspen, Colorado, United States. It is a stone building erected during the 1890s, from a design by Willoughby J. Edbrooke that blends elements of the Romanesque Revival and Italianate architectural styles. In 1972 it became the first property in the city to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and the second in Pitkin County. The upstairs auditorium hosts a number of events every year, ranging from nationally prominent music and comedy acts and some of the Aspen Music Festival's events to productions by local community groups.
  It is one of two buildings in town named after early developer Jerome B. Wheeler. Originally, the opera house was located on the third floor, with retail space at street level and professional offices on the second floor. An early 20th-century arson fire damaged the interior, and in its wake the theater fell into disuse. The building became property of the city due to tax default. Later in the century it was renovated several times, twice from designs by Herbert Bayer, to bring it back into full use.
context_section_description: That era ended with the Panic of 1893. Congress repealed the Silver Purchase Act, and mines closed overnight as demand dropped. Jerome Wheeler was forced into bankruptcy. The theater he had built became a lot less busier.
  Aspen entered a period of its history known as the Silent or Quiet Years. The population declined quickly as silver mining retreated to a much smaller role in the local economy. Ranching and potato farming took on more importance, but could not make up for the prosperity silver had provided. Within the city many very new buildings from the boom years fell empty and neglected. Some burned, unattended and unextinguished, or succumbed to decay from the effects of an intense annual five-month winter at 8,000 feet (2,400 m) above sea level. The Wheeler survived primarily by showing movies, as that medium emerged.
  After one of those shows, in 1912, a fire was discovered in the space between the stage floor and the dressing rooms (then located beneath). It was extinguished with minimal permanent damage and the theater was able to show another movie the following night. A week and a half later, another fire broke out in the early morning hours. Since it started in three different locations simultaneously, the cause was clearly arson. It was hot enough to melt the steel cables at the stage. The community decried the act, and the Wheeler was boarded up. The lower floors remained occupied, but it would be years before the theater was used again. In 1918, an unpaid tax bill of $1,155 ($20,000 in contemporary dollars) led to the city acquiring the building for that sum.
  It did not restore the theater, however, as most of the productions that visited the city could be accommodated in Armory Hall (now City Hall). In 1930 Aspen's population reached its all-time low of just over 500, less than 10% of what it had been when the Wheeler was built. Near the end of the decade some visitors, particularly Europeans who helped to train the "soldiers on skis" of the Army's Tenth Mountain Division in the area, saw the city's potential for recreational Alpine skiing.
caption: Wheeler in early 1900s
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